Tech

35 Urban Innovations We're Watching This Year

In the Global Innovation Series, presented by BMW i, Mashable highlights new technologies that will improve the urban experience. City dwellers are always thinking about mobility, energy, shelter, safety and efficiency, and many technologies and startups in cities all around the globe are developing new tools to ameliorate these daily problems. If these concepts come to fruition, then the future of cities is looking bright.

Whether you're thinking easier ways to park your car or ideas for the home of the future, studying how we'll live in the next 10, 50 or 100 years can reshape the habits and challenges we face today. Below are 35 topics we've covered in the series, and they offer an exciting glimpse into the future of city life.

Whether faced with a dead battery or an unexpected emergency, you’ve likely found yourself without access to a phone. It leaves you feeling helpless and even vulnerable. The makers of SpareOne phone seek to prevent similar situations in the future — or, at least, for the next 15 years.

Debuted at CES 2012, the SpareOne phone runs on a single AA battery, which can last up to 15 years or through 10 hours of talk time. The phone features straightforward, no-frills technology that allows you to make and receive calls from its simple, lightweight device. Read more.

When you think "display of the future," what pops into your head? Is it the hyper-neon displays of Blade Runner or the holograms from Star Wars? The world of digital display always seems to wiggle its way into the bleeding-edge technology of science fiction, but it's not unwarranted.

Turns out, some of those fantastical displays may be seen in your city, airport or shopping mall in the next five years. Read more.

What's the future of retail, and how far away is it? Turns out that in the next couple of years, customers will be able to try on clothes and products at home with no shipping required. Technology will allow shoppers to virtually wear garments — smelling, hearing and feeling the fabric as if it were real.

Sound crazy? It's not, when you look deeply into the world of augmented reality (AR). Augmented reality technology typically overlays the virtual world on top of the real-world environment through a device, such as a mobile phone or a tablet. But certain companies are redefining the bounds of virtual reality experiences by home-growing their own unique AR technologies and platforms. Read more.

4. Why Supermarkets Are So 20th CenturyNo one likes grocery shopping — you wander the aisles, feel up produce, and dump cans of SpaghettiOs and heads of lettuce into a cart. Then you have to trudge home — or at least to your car — with bags weighing you down on both sides. Some argue that it's easier just to eat out all the time — that's certainly a popular mentality in New York — and others might just order in via Seamless.

The U.S. grocery market is a $538 billion industry, and only 2% of that revenue comes via the web — a share that's far less than in the pet supply, book, baby products and cosmetics industries, according to Forrester. Which means it's an area ripe for innovation and tech integration. Read more.

The battery lives of your smartphones, tablets and mp3 players have increased over the years, thanks to tech advancements. Throughout the day, we check email, pull up maps, listen to music and chat with friends, depleting your device's juice. So when the 10% battery warning flashes, it can instill panic if you're on-the-go with no access to an outlet.

Could the future of tech fashion change that?

Researchers and designers have successfully developed textile prototypes that double as chargers. Most of these prototypes are being used to highlight potential mobile charging solutions. Read more.

Urban populations grow larger every day. Researchers predict that nearly 75% of the world's population will live in cities by the year 2050. As a result of this continued growth, there's a need — and a demand — for cities to build smarter infrastructures to ensure reliable operations and provide consistent, sustainable energy.

In the digital age, cities are finding technology can help solve problems more quickly.

One of the biggest advancements in this area is smart grid technology. In simple terms, the smart grid is an advanced type of power grid, which is the system used to distribute electrical power throughout a certain region. Read more.

Imagine the luxury of walking into a coffee shop and receiving a personalized drink deal on your smartphone or tablet upon entry. Or, receiving an automated mobile thank-you note for watching a film, exactly an hour after leaving the theater. Read more.

Many of us spend several hours of the day face-down into our laptops. We navigate our cities and communities from the control panels of our smartphones. And at the end of the day, we cozy up with our flat screens or e-readers.

Although some people fight mankind's preoccupation with and dependency on screen technology, it's safe to say, the jig is up. We're hooked.

And today's major cities have begun not only to accept our gadget obsession, but to encourage it. Read more.

Design trends are influenced by both form and function, but also bow to limitations of existing technology. When we look back at flat-screen TVs compared to LCDs, then further to the bulky cathode ray tube (remember these?), it's obvious we've come a long way. Within a few years, according to industry reps, we'll say the same about store displays, vehicle lighting and kitchen countertops. Read more.

You might think augmented reality is the way of the future, but really, it has its roots in the 20th century. Morton Heilig, the "Father of Virtual Reality," patented the Sensorama Stimulator, which he called an "experience theater," on Aug. 28, 1962. Over time, the idea of using technology to create a layer over the real world has been honed and refined and put in our palms, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones.

Confused about what augmented reality is? In short, it's a way to use technology to redefine space, and it places a virtual layer over the world with geographic specificity ensuring a good fit. Read more.

We've all been through it before in one way or another: While spending some time cruising around your community, you spot some unsightly graffiti, a broken manhole cover and a blown-over chain link fence on public property. Or, maybe you find that one traffic light nearby is taking an unreasonably long time to change from red to green.

Whatever the issue is, you feel compelled to call your local government's non-essential civic issues line to get it taken care of. But instead of finding a simple and easy fix to the annoying eyesores plaguing your community, you find that you've plunged headlong into what seems like a mountain of red tape. Read more.

We all lead busy lives, and the last thing we need is to come from a long day to find our mailboxes overflowing with junk mail. How many times have you received an unwanted credit card offer and thrown it out without even opening the envelope? It's wasteful and unnecessary.

Fortunately, there are many digital options both for marketers and recipients to reduce that unwanted pile of junk mail — marketers need not waste money sending materials to uninterested consumers, and consumers can receive only things that interest them. Despite the presence of this technology, millions of tons of junk mail are sent and tossed every year — not the best way to conserve our finite paper resources. Read more.

Let's face it: The world of the modern airline isn't the most convenient of places. In fact, the airport can be nothing short of a bureaucratic hell. Whether you're an experienced traveler or an occasional passenger, traveling half an hour upstate or 24 hours to the other side of the world, the stress of an airline experience can drive everyone a little bonkers.

But thanks to innovative minds all over the globe, airline travel is changing rapidly. Technological advances, both within the airports' systems and from consumer-facing companies, can save you major headaches during your travels. Read more.

As gas prices continue to climb along with car maintenance costs and environmental concerns, the concept of carpooling to work and around town has never been more appealing. But there's a lot of hassle and research that goes into finding a reliable person to share a ride with — not to mention the safety concerns.

Urban carpooling is becoming more popular not only in the U.S. but also worldwide, thanks to companies that offer commuters safe and affordable ways to share rides on the way to work, to shopping malls and for road trips. Read more.

Bridges have been around as long as humans wanted to go places. A simple log or tree was used to bridge a gap in the land. Today's bridges are so much more than utilitarian structures that enable you to get from point A to point B. They add aesthetic value and, in many ways, represent the region around it.

Thanks to the growth of modern technology, new and existing bridges are incorporating highly advanced design features and construction to ensure efficiency and safety. From an arch bridge with a dynamic light display that can tell you whether there's a full or crescent moon to structures that collect data about bridge conditions with sensors, bridges are becoming smarter on a global level. Read more.

You can make your way around most cities using Google public transit searches or various transit apps, but many cities now provide a list of recommended transportation apps on their websites. A handful of progressive cities even have their own official transit apps.

With all that Facebooking, Twittering, emailing and web browsing, your phone and computer are probably down to 5% battery by sunset. And odds are, when bedtime rolls around, you plug in your phone, tablet and laptop to let them recharge overnight. Then there are the things that are always plugged in, like your TV, your coffee maker and your electric toothbrush. Plugging in like this is actually bad on three accounts. First, overcharging your devices can ruin their battery life. Second, you'll end up with more expensive energy bills. Third, you're wasting precious energy by charging a device that doesn't need more juice, because it's already hit 100% battery.

Everyone wants to make their living spaces greener these days, and it's not hard to lessen your footprint. In fact, one of the best ways to save energy is to eliminate this "vampire power" when charging your devices. Read more.

Not being home during business hours is normal, but it can be terribly inconvenient for certain errands. At a time when technology is burgeoning and a large chunk of commerce is done online, it seems like the convenience of online services is wasted once you have to deal with offline nuisances, such as needing to pick up your order from a package facility or rushing to the dry cleaners on your lunch break.

Check out three companies trying to tackle the problem of running errands with city-focused, high-tech solutions. Read more.

Parking in a major city, from Seattle to Sydney, can be a downright nightmare. After trolling a lot for what seems like ages, you end up fumbling for change to feed the meter for your stay. Of course, it's all done to prevent the painful parking ticket, which is such the ire of citizens everywhere that it has its own reality show.

Thankfully, private companies are partnering with cities all over the world to solve the headaches of metropolitan parking — and the answer is probably in your pocket right now. Read more.

Prefabrication isn't new. In fact, most everything around you is prefab: that picture frame on your desk, your computer monitor, even the light bulb above your head. Prefab simply means an item or components of an item are pre-assembled in a factory before the final product reaches you.

Even prefab homes have been around for decades. The mobile home revolutionized functional, affordable housing. For its time, modular housing was incredibly waste-efficient, too, compared to the on-site building processes of today, which can exhaust more than 30% of building materials. Read more.

One benefit of living in an urban environment is that it's pretty easy to walk from point A to point B. If it's a far distance (or if the weather is inclement), you can hop on the bus or subway. And if you really deserve a treat (or you're just in a rush), you can hail a cab for a private chauffeur.

But, at the risk of channeling #FirstWorldProblems, finding a cab can be kind of a nuisance. Some neighborhoods don't get good taxi traffic, and certain times of day are notoriously hard for cab-seekers to score a ride. Read more.

Sitting in traffic may seem like a necessary evil, but several app developers are devoted to making driving suck less. Commuting was once a lonely experience with drivers victimized by conditions outside their control. But what if cars on the road could move in harmony rather than like a tidal wave?

Mobile phone technology makes it possible to communicate with the people around you — passively and indirectly — therefore allowing everyone to move efficiently together. In addition to helping drivers avoid roadblocks, traffic apps are discovering interesting data around driving and commuting that can in turn inspire cities to create better infrastructures. Here, we've rounded up four apps that will help you avoid gridlock and get there faster. Read more.

The children are our future, and while they enjoy their fair share of Angry Birds sessions and Twilight marathons, they're a pretty innovative and impressive bunch. Below, we've outlined five projects that show the young'uns are in control and will use technology to make the world a better place.

"Showing young people how technology is a tool, and fostering an entrepreneurial spirit toward problem solving, can be incredibly empowering," explains Terry Howerton, chairman of the Chicago Tech Academy and founder of the incubator TechNexus. By starting students on a tech track at a young age, we're preparing the next generation to think outside the box and create innovative solutions to the world's problems. Read more.

As home appliance companies continue to focus on sustainability, energy efficiency and impressive design, domestic essentials are becoming more innovative. These appliances can do more than expand your skills in the kitchen.

In upcoming years, coffee machines will start right when we get out of bed, ovens can bake meals to perfection and robotic vacuums will automatically clean floors when dirty. Read more.

25. Is Bike Sharing a Magic Bullet for Cities?When it comes to a city's growing pains, such as traffic congestion and deteriorating air quality, the best solutions don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The bicycle, a kids' toy for some and extreme sports prop for others (not to mention, muse for the hit Queen song) is now finding its way into conversations about public transportation.

Bike sharing programs operate in Minneapolis, Boston and DC, to name a few U.S. cities, along with renowned international programs in Montreal, Berlin and Paris. They seem an oddball stepsister to traditional public transit, which normally conjures up images of being crammed into a subway car or bus with neighbors and strangers. In addition to moving people from point A to point B, bikes are said to be good for the environment, public health and traffic conditions. Read more.

Throughout the last 10 years, the world of design — specifically architecture and engineering — has benefited greatly from major technological advances. Although it wasn't too long ago that many infrastructure and object modeling required excellent hand-drafting and perceptibility skills (not to mention plenty of time and attention to detail), 3D software tools such as Autocad have revolutionized the speed and efficiency of the design landscape.

Now, as we think about the next breakthroughs in design, it's key to understand that the future doesn't end with software. With the rise of the tablet and the proliferation of 3D printing, plenty of great machines are able to speed up modeling and even turn conceptual plans into tangible models within a matter of minutes. Read more.

There's a reason the crowds are said to have wisdom, and why two heads are better than one. Working together, individuals and groups can have a positive synergy that gets things done, so it's no wonder that cities are benefitting for crowdsourcing instead of just top-down change. Just look at the success of Kickstarter in the crowdfunding space and SeeClickFix in the urban improvement space.

These two concepts — crowdfunding and urban improvement — have been married by several recently launched startups, both in the U.S. and abroad. Read more.

By 2030, it's estimated that more than 5 billion people will live in urban settings. Therefore, it's imperative for cities to integrate technology into their infrastructure so that metropolian areas can sustain this rapid population growth.

With hackathons and app challenges, we've seen the emergence of civic startups, like SeeClickFix, and we're now seeing the rise of "civic accelerators."Read more.

Digitally connecting one person with another is powerful in itself, but connecting entire communities in the United States and around the world is truly transformative. Broadband, specifically, has the potential to give Internet users access to information that can inspire action, changing the way people learn, do business and help each other.

At the 2012 Social Good Summit in September, Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg spoke about the rapidly growing enterprise of broadband. "Today, [there are] 6.3 million mobile subscriptions in the world, 1 million broadband subscriptions in the world. That’s just going to blow the next five years. [By] 2017? 5 billion mobile broadband subscriptions," he said. Read more.

To improve it, several major cities opened their data to let people develop useful and interesting apps. "While all of our approaches are a bit different, we are all using open data and new technology to explore new ways of improving our cities with and for our residents," says James Solomon, who directs the Street Bump project (discussed below) in Boston.

We browsed the web and app stores to find seven innovative apps that we think should be available in every major city across the globe. From public art guides to restaurant health code information, bike paths to park guides, these apps make cities safer, governments more transparent and urban denizens more informed. It's a win-win for all. Read more.

The American system of higher education has long been the envy of foreign onlookers — that's why the governments of many countries are inviting U.S. universities to open satellite campuses in their centers for higher learning, in hopes of adopting some of the U.S.'s best home-grown practices.

But it's not just the foreign countries who benefit from the deal. In what the New York Times called an "educational gold rush," U.S. universities are rushing to claim their turf in cities across the Middle East, East Asia and India. Read more.

There are plenty of ways to get around a city, to suit nearly every lifestyle: trains, cars, rollerblades and subways. But, the one you may not see on the streets of most urban cities is the electric bicycle.

While motorized bikes, powered by gas or otherwise, are fairly common in places like South America and Asia, powered bicycles haven't really taken off stateside. This is due in large part to their design: Heavy electric bicycles have a high learning curve compared to regular bikes and can, quite unceremoniously run out of batteries. Quite the headache for the urban commuter looking to make it to work with a little extra power in their wheels.

That is, until a promising startup swooped in on Kickstarter and made a splash in the electric bike scene. Read more.

These days, it seems like everyone is innovating for the future. From eco-friendly prefab housing to high-tech city bridges, companies and cities are putting unique and interesting spins on what they believe will change our future. But, think about this for a second: Have you ever thought long and hard about what your thermostat will look like in 10 or 15 years?

Probably not. Turns out that the thermostat, for better or for worse, hasn't really changed its form or function in the last few decades, aside from a digital interface and more sophisticated temperature-sensing technology. It seems as though there wasn't much to say about the device until the introduction of the Nest: A high-tech smart thermostat that broke the mold for its minimalist design and mobile, sustainable programming options. Read more.

What if your house just ran itself? Every morning you could wake up to a fresh pot of coffee, a slice of warm toast and a heated kitchen that maintains just the right temperature for a chilly morning. Plus, when you leave your house for work, your door locks behind you automatically, your home's temperature control adjusts for an empty house and a special sensor kicks in to make sure your dog doesn't get into the garbage while you're away.

The smart home is a staple of sci-fi tropes, but it's not as far off as you may think. In fact, we can see systems in place as early as next month from a platform that is taking the tech world by storm. SmartThings is a platform to make everyday objects respond to digital cues, and it's poised to mainstream (and expedite) the smart home system. Read more.

You think cities are crowded now? By 2030, more than 5 billion people will live in urban settings. But before we get to that kind of population density, we have to optimize our cities. We need to make them smarter and better; technology can help.

Cities all around the world work with developers and contractors to make city living better, whether it's improving the timing of traffic lights or creating a useful app, which becomes more powerful as smartphone penetration continues to increase. Read more.

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is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 42 million unique visitors worldwide and 21 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.